She nodded, regal and aloof, in control again of the one thing that was still within her power. “Yes,” recalling the ritual response, “I have come to be changed. I am the Sea incarnate; as the tide turns and the world has its seasons, so must I follow to lead. Winter has had its season… the snow dissolves on the face of the Sea, and from it soft rains are reborn.” Her voice rang eerily through the underworld. The ritual was being recorded by hidden cameras, broadcast sight and sound over screens set up throughout the city.
“Summer follows Winter as night follows day. The sea joins the land. Together the halves become whole; who can separate them? Who can deny them their place, or their time, when their time has come? They are born of a power greater than any here. Their truth is universal!” The Summer Queen lifted her arms to the crowd.
Arienrhod started slightly. She had never said that last line, never heard it before. The crowds murmured; a prickling unease crept in her.
“Who comes with you to be changed?”
“My beloved,” keeping her voice even, “whose body is like the earth, coupled with the Sea. Together beneath the sky, we can never be separated.” The cold wind burned her eyes. Herne said nothing, did nothing, waiting with appropriate stoicism.
“Then so be it.” The woman’s voice actually broke. She held out her hands, and two of the attendant Summers placed a small bowl of dark liquid in each. The Summer Queen offered a bowl to Herne; he took it willingly. She offered the other to Arienrhod. “Will you drink to the Lady’s mercy?”
Arienrhod felt her mouth stiffen against the reply; said, finally, “Yes.” The bowl held a strong drug which would dull her fear and awareness of what was coming. Beside her Herne lifted his black mask and raised the bowl to his lips, grimaced. Arienrhod raised her own. She had always intended to refuse it; rejecting the idea of dimming her awareness of the moment when her triumph would have been clear. But now she wanted oblivion. “To the Lady.” She sniffed the pungent fragrance of the herbs, felt their numbing gall burn inside her mouth. She swallowed the liquid, deadening her throat; the second swallow, and the third were as tasteless as water.
As she finished it and returned the bowl she saw Summers approaching, carrying the ropes that would bind them to the cart, and to each other, inescapably. Terror congealed in her chest, panic darkened her sight. Deaden me, for gods’ sakes! trying to feel the numbness spread. Herne almost resisted as the Summers laid hands on him; she saw his muscles twist and harden, and his weakness gave her strength. She sat perfectly still and pliant as the Summers bound her hands, her feet, bound her body tightly against Herne’s and fastened the ropes to the cart itself. Even though the cart had the form of a blunt-nosed boat, she knew that its bed gaped with holes beneath the heaps of furs and offerings, and that it would sink almost immediately. She couldn’t keep her hands from straining at their bonds, or her body from trying to pull away from Herne’s. His masked face turned toward her, but she would not look at him.
The Summer Queen was back in place before them, but turning to face the water as she recited the final Invocation to the Sea. As she finished, the silence that had fallen over the crowd continued, the silence of anticipation now. Now, at any moment, she would give the sign. Arienrhod felt a dreamlike lethargy creep along her limbs, along her spine; but her mind was still far too clear. Is it meant to work that way? At least now her body was becoming too leaden to betray her, granting her dignity in death whether she wanted it or not.
But instead of moving aside, the Summer Queen turned back to face her again. “Your Majesty.” The urgency of the muffled voice caught at her. “Would you — look on the face of Summer’s Queen before you die?”
Arienrhod stared uncomprehendingly, felt Herne stare, too. Tradition said that the new Queen did not unmask, casting off her sins, until the old one had gone into the sea; giving the sign for the crowd to follow.
But this woman had stumbled off the ritual path once already. Is she so stupid? Or was it something else? “I would see your face, yes,” forcing the words out between numb lips.
The Summer Queen moved closer to the cart, where the crowd could not see her clearly. Slowly she put her hands to the mask, and lifted it off her head.
A cascade of silvery hair tumbled out and down. Arienrhod gaped at the face that the mask revealed. The ring of Summers surrounding the cart gaped, too. She heard their voices murmur as the wonder spread, as they all saw what she saw… face to face with her own face.
“Moon—” barely even a whisper to betray her. Her body sat perfectly still, as though it saw nothing unusual, nothing remarkable, incredible, impossible. Not in vain. It was not in vain!
“Gods,” Herne mumbled thickly. “How? How’d you do it, Arienrhod?”
She only smiled.
Moon shook out her hair, meeting the smile with forgiveness, and defiance, and compassion. “Change has come… because of you, in spite of you, Your Majesty.” She lowered the mask over her head again.
The Summers around the cart drew away, looking from face to face, their own expressions caught between amazement and fear. “The Queen! They’re both the Queen—” an augury, an omen. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible on Moon’s throat; they pointed at it and murmured again.
Herne chuckled with difficulty. “The secret’s out… it’s out at last. She’s been off world, she knows what she is.”
“What? What, Herne?” trying to turn her head.
“Sibyls are everywhere! You never knew, did you; you never even suspected. And those stuffed dummies—” glancing toward the off worlders in the stands, “they don’t suspect a thing.” His mangled laughter left him gasping.
Sibyls are everywhere?… Can they be real? No, it isn’t fair, there’s so much left to learn! Closing her eyes, unable to focus her inner sight. But it wasn’t in vain.
The chorus of wailing and execration began to press again, inexorable like the process of change, impatient for the sacrifice. All of the crowd’s overflowing grief, all of its blame, all of its hostility and resentment and fear poured into this fragile boat, onto the helpless beings of herself and Herne, to be taken down with them at the ritual’s culmination. She no longer strained against the contact between her body and Herne’s, grateful at last for someone to share the trial, and this last moment, with her… the passing through into another plane. She had seen too many visions of heaven, too many hells, to choose among them. I hope we make our own.
She turned her gaze outward a last time, to see Moon standing aside from the cart’s path: Her body was taut with strain, as though she were about to speak an unforgivable curse, one that she could never take back. Why should it hurt her? I would rejoice — Not able to remember why she would rejoice, or even whether it was true. She rallied her mind one last time, before Moon could speak the fateful words, to speak her own last words. “My people—” half obliterated by their cries. “Winter is gone! Obey the new Queen… as you would your own. For she is your own now.” She dropped her head, catching only Moon’s eyes. “Where… is he?”
Moon moved her head slightly, a twinge of jealousy in it, but granting her clone-mother’s last request. Arienrhod followed her glance to find Sparks standing among the honored Summers, by the empty place that was the Summer Queen’s own in the stands. But he stood with his eyes closed against the parting moment; or against the chance that she might look up and see him one last time… He cares… he does care. She looked back again at Moon. They both do. In that moment infinitely surprised, eternally confounded, by life’s imperviousness to reason or justice.